Rock My Heart (13 page)

I laughed out loud before I bestowed Cillian with a light kiss on his lips. “Your words like poetry. You’re much more perceptive than you ought to be…are you sure you’re a biker? I thought all you guys knew was caveman talk.”

“And I thought all you rich girls only knew two words: ‘Let’s go shopping’.”

“That’s three words,” I murmured.

“Yeah, I kinda changed the phrase before it came out of my mouth.”

I laughed again and lay on my side while he looped his arm around my shoulders and held me closer to him.

This wasn’t just post-coital bliss but a real meeting of the minds and I missed having these occurrences after sex with Kaz. More often than not, he turned over and went to sleep sometime between me going to the bathroom and coming back to bed.

Yes, I had fucked up in a major way and if anyone could understand the product of cheating, it was me. My father had cheated on his wife to conceive me with my mother after all.

A part of me hated my behavior but the rational side of me thought this was something that had to happen. It would push Kaz into action and either he would fight for me like I wanted him to or I had resigned myself to raising this baby all by myself, the same way my mother had raised me.

I may have been a low-down, dirty bitch for cheating on my fiancé but I wasn’t a slut and I knew in my heart it was always better to go at it alone than to have another man over my child, and a son no less. He would never have to be ashamed of his mother because I planned to be the best one in the world and he would never want for anything except maybe love and affection from a father that
chose
not to be there for us.

My contemplation had taken me so deeply within myself, I didn’t realize anything was wrong until Cillian sat straight up in bed. “Holy fuck!”

“What’s the matter?” I asked as I slowly sat up with him.

“Fucking Kaz is home—that’s what’s the matter!”

And then I realized the magnitude of what we’d done as it slowly sank in.

This situation, as fucked as it was, just had gotten worse.

Chapter Twelve

Home Sweet Home

KAZ WALKED THROUGH the double doors of his home and was so bone tired, he didn’t realize anything was slightly off.

Syd was usually up by this time of the morning but she wasn’t expecting him either so he wasn’t all that surprised. He turned on the Keurig machine and made himself a cup of coffee as he leaned over on the counter top.

Cillian strolled into the kitchen with bedhead, no t-shirt and a pair of jeans. His feet were bare and he tried to play it casual. “Hey, little brother. What brings you home so early? I thought you weren’t coming home until later today on the plane.”

Kaz grabbed his cup of coffee and sipped from the strong, black liquid. “I changed my mind. I wanted to see Syd as soon as possible. I realize what a fucking jerk I’ve been and I wanted to apologize to her because she deserves better.”

“You’re just now realizing that?” Cillian’s tone was mocking as he made himself a cup of coffee.

“No. It’s been playing on my mind for a while now and then I thought how she was alone in the house with a man like you. You couldn’t keep it in your pants if you tried. The thought alone had me racing to get back from Vegas.”

His brother looked at him before he laughed out loud. “You’re kidding, right? You just realized you shouldn’t have left her alone with me. Not that it matters…how did your trip go? Have you made a decision about what you plan to do?”

Kaz couldn’t put his finger on it but something wasn’t right. Cillian wasn’t acting like his normal, sarcastic self and that frightened him more than anything imaginable.

Before he could contemplate the issue any further, Syd walked into the kitchen wearing a sleeveless paisley maxi dress. Her hair was damp and she’d wrapped it into a bun. Her make-up free face and steel blue eyes glowed with happiness and…something else.

“Hey, sweetheart.” She walked over and embraced him before he wrapped his arms around her waist.

“Damn, babe, it’s good to see you. Can we talk in private?”

Syd continued to smile before she turned on the electric tea pot and set out her favorite mug and set a bag of Earl Grey inside. “Sure. Why don’t you go take a shower and I’ll be right up?”

He surprised her when he snuck up behind her and kissed her on the lips. She looked slightly taken aback. “I love you, baby.”

“I love you too,” she said in a soft voice before her blue eyes darted away to look at the electric tea pot.

Kaz walked up the stairs and entered their suite.

The first item to catch his eye was the bed. It was made up and obviously hadn’t been touched. He didn’t know much and thought perhaps the lack of sleep was making him paranoid but he knew she hadn’t slept in their bad the previous night.

He suddenly turned and stalked down to the guest room where Cillian was staying. He opened the double doors. The bed was a mess and the sheets were wrinkled with the indentation of a body. It wasn’t the state of the bed that bothered him as much as that smell he was more than familiar with because he’d enjoyed it much too often.

The scent of recent sexual activity assaulted him and along with a manly smell was the feminine odor of a woman he was more than familiar with…Sydney.

Kaz spun around and left the room, leaving the double doors open and barely made it to the his bathroom in time before he vomited into the toilet. He hadn’t eaten much but his stomach purged everything he’d consumed in the last twelve hours and he didn’t feel better until he’d flushed the toilet and started the shower.

His mind was an utter mess and at this point, he couldn’t even pretend to consider his options or think about what they were. This was such a deception of the highest magnitude and yet, he couldn’t blame her for what she’d done. He’d been such an asshole and perhaps this had to happen between the two of them but what would happen after the whole situation was out in the open?

Kaz couldn’t live a lie, it wasn’t the type of person he was and Syd would have to put on her big girl panties and admit to fucking his brother.

There wasn’t much he could do except throw Cillian out but it was tit for tat. He’d fucked Brianna, Cillian’s old lady and the mother of his children, bare-back no less but that was ages ago. Surely he wasn’t still carrying a grudge about a situation that happened seven years ago? Or was he?

The shower rejuvenated him but he was still worn out and tired. He gargled with Listerine and brushed his teeth rigorously before he walked into the bedroom nude. Sydney held a pair of black sweat pants and matching wife-beater on her lap. She sat on the bed looking like the beautiful, blonde poised woman she had transformed herself into over the months he’d known her.

Kaz grabbed the clothes and put on the sweat pants and slid the wife-beater over his head. “Thanks.”

“Well, it’s the least I can do since you drove all night to get back home.” She looked away from him and sipped her tea. “It was a nice gesture and I’m sure whatever you have to say to me is beautiful and heart felt but at this point in our relationship, you killed it when you left your engagement ring on the bureau.”

He sat down next to her and ran his hands through his hair nervously. “That was stupid but I felt like such an asshole and a bully for hitting you. It wasn’t the right thing to do and I should have never…touched you in that way. You’re the mother of my child and to hit a woman is just wrong. I was wrong…I should have asked you whether you wanted to move to Vegas.”

Sydney glared at him. “What difference does it make, Kaz? You’ve made up your mind anyway so what do you want from me? Validation? Do you want me to say that I’m going to accompany you?”

Kaz’s blue-green eyes turned ice-cold. “Well, if I can forgive you for fucking Cillian then the least you can do is accompany me to Vegas. It wouldn’t be all that different from living here to be honest—”

“Except I don’t want to live in Vegas, Kasper.” Syd stood and began to pace. “You don’t have to forgive me for sleeping with Cillian. In fact, I was hoping for you to be angry and call me a slut or a whore.”

“But you’re not a slut or a whore.” Kaz felt the fatigue wash over him and this wasn’t a conversation he felt like having when all he could think about was his comfortable bed and closing his eyes. “It was unrealistic of me to think that I would your one and only anyway. I don’t want to fight with you and to be honest, I don’t have the energy either. Can we discuss this at another time?”

She stopped pacing and looked at him intently. He could see the hurt and pain behind those gorgeous blue-gray irises and if he could, he would make it all go away. “Yes, of course. Get some rest and we’ll talk about our issues later.”

Kaz stood up but he almost fell down due to how tired he was. Syd helped him to his side of the bed, slid the covers back and he laid down. She slipped the covers over his body and ran her fingers through his dark hair before she pulled away. His eyes closed involuntarily as he slipped into the warm comfort of their bed.

The last words he heard were her murmur, “I didn’t do any of this to hurt you or because I was mad at you and wanted to get even. I did it so you could see me—the
real
me—and just know that I am not afraid to do this on my own. You have to stop treating me like a child and start thinking of me as your equal, or there
isn’t
a future between you and I.”

He wanted to respond but before he could form a single coherent thought, he’d fallen asleep.

KAZ WOKE UP and realized he was in his own bed.

Syd was nowhere to be found.

He glanced at the clock and grimaced over the fact that he’d slept the whole day away.

It was nearing six in the evening and the room was dimly lit.

He stretched, stood and walked straight to his bathroom where he used the toilet, brushed his teeth and cleaned his face.

Afterwards, he felt slightly more human and mentally prepared himself as he walked down the stairs and entered the sitting room. Syd wasn’t there but Cillian was and by the looks of the few amount of items he’d brought with him, he was preparing to leave.

“She’s not here, Kaz.” His brother continued to pack. “She left and went over to Talia’s house a couple hours ago.”

The anger Kaz hadn’t allowed himself to feel earlier bubbled up in his chest and he couldn’t hide how upset he was at the whole situation. It was
never
okay for his fiancée to bump uglies with his oldest brother. In fact, he found the whole situation disgusting and deplorable. He couldn’t express how he felt earlier because he knew he would have exploded and that would not have been a good situation for him or Sydney.

He’d already made the mistake and hit her once. The error of judgment on his part weighed heavily on him because he never wanted to become that type of man who could so casually lay his hands on a woman like that. It still frightened him though he knew no amount of apologies would smooth over that particular situation.

This one, on the other hand, was convoluted and messy; any situation involving sex usually was, but he still had to know why his brother would intentionally hurt him as bad as he had.

Was it just for bragging rights? Did he honestly consider Syd an attractive woman and decided to go there? Had she somehow worked her way under his skin?

“Why her?” Kaz walked over to the bar and poured himself a healthy amount of Macallan 50 in a crystal tumbler and swigged from it.

“Let’s call it a family tradition.” Cillian’s blue eyes were chips of ice in an otherwise sarcastic face that displayed his rugged handsomeness that all the women swooned over. “Do I love her? Yes. Am I
in
love with her? No. We shared a lot while you were gone and I look forward to having her as my sister in law. She was some of the best sex I ever had outside of Gisela. Alas, she is the only woman for me and the only person I would risk everything for, including my standing in the club.”